This Radical Religious Freedom Dissent Reveals Kavanaugh’s Views on Sex and Power

At first, in the yonder year of three weeks ago, it seemed that if anything would sink Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination it was his cavalier description of contraceptives as an “abortion-inducing drug” when discussing his dissent from a decision that turned back Priests for Life’s challenge to the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act.

That, of course, was before Christine Blasey Ford made her bombshell allegation that a beer-stupefied Kavanaugh tried to rape her at a party when they were in high school, Deborah Ramirez alleged that Kavanaugh waved his penis in her face at a drunken dorm party at Yale, and Julie Swetnick released a sworn statement asserting that she witnessed Kavanaugh engaging “in abusive and physically aggressive behavior toward girls.

But the two stories aren’t as disconnected as they seem. Both reveal a specific worldview regarding women and sex and exactly who gets to set the rules regarding the policing of such.

While Kavanaugh was happy to repeat the claim of Priests for Life that certain contraceptives are abortifacients in his initial confirmation hearing, the bigger concern is the sweeping power he was willing to confer to religious entities in his dissent from the majority in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit’s ruling.